Harlingen man says he tried to help women

Published 7:00 pm, Wednesday, May 28, 2008

A Harlingen man being held in Mexico on child trafficking charges said Thursday that charges that he bought children from poor Mexican women and sold them to adoptive couples in the United States are false.

"A child is not an object _ not a car," Amado Torres Vega, 64, told The Monitor during an interview at the Reynosa, Mexico, Police Department. "We're dealing with lives and feelings. We're dealing with a child's future."

Torres and his 25-year-old girlfriend, Maria Isabel Hernandez, are suspected of buying more than a dozen children that were 2 or younger, Mexican officials said.

Investigator Oralia Mancha said the child trafficking ring was revealed when a woman came to a police station in Reynosa on Monday to report her granddaughter missing, spotted Torres there and claimed he had the baby.

Police later arrested Torres and Hernandez after finding them with the baby at a house in nearby Rio Bravo.

The newspaper reported that a criminal complaint filed against Torres contains statements from nine mothers who allegedly took money from him.

Tamaulipas state police investigator Raul Gamez said Torres helped smuggle pregnant women into the United States so their children could be born as U.S. citizens, making them more easily adoptable by parents in Michigan and Tennessee.

A 39-year-old mother from Rio Bravo told authorities she sold three children to Torres to pay for medical care for a 9-year-old daughter suffering from bone marrow cancer.

Torres told the newspaper that all of his efforts to help the women were legitimate.

He said he worked for years with a Harlingen attorney and a San Antonio-based adoption agency to set up legally sanctioned adoptions. And any money that may have changed hands came from adoptive parents looking to ensure prenatal care for the child, he said.

"If you shake me twice, you'll find that no money comes out," Torres said. "I wasn't making a dime off of this."

Employees of the San Antonio agency said they had never heard of Torres.

Torres said that if the women said they needed to pay someone to take them across the Rio Grande he would lend it to them.

Torres said he stood by his work.

"These women were irresponsible," he said. "What are their options? Abortion? I did what I could to give their children a better life."

If convicted, Torres and Hernandez each could face up to 12 years in a Mexican prison.